It’s exactly one year since I wrote my first article for The Kemptown Rag. I won’t ask if you remember it. Let’s be honest, when The South Bank Show celebrates fifty years of the Rag in 2056 (by which time I hope to be able to get a picture on my Freeview box), it’s unlikely to warrant a mention. But for those who care, it was the uncensored story of the night my girlfriend and I spent skulking in the shadows of Brighton's first sex shop with a History teacher and a handful of pensioners. Or to put it another way, ‘Landscape by Lamplight’: a 2-mile guided walk organised by the council. I prefer my description.
One year on, Brighton council chose to mark the anniversary of my article by sending local historian Geoff Mead out onto the streets again to lead another rag-tag band of history-seekers around the city centre, and keen to burn off a few calories before Pancake Day, I was there. Which is more than I can say for my girlfriend. She still hasn’t recovered from last year’s frostbite.
This time around, the walk was called 'Brighton's Hidden Farmlands', which doesn’t exactly fill you with excitement. It’s a shame, because the actual experience is hugely entertaining. After all, where else can you creep around in the dark for ninety minutes, hearing about the shepherd who was locked up in 1882 for being drunk in charge of a flock of sheep? Nowhere, that's where.
With the exception of the story about the blind beadle who mistook a goat for a dog and shot it (which is always worth repeating), Geoff had all-new material this year, and took us on an entirely different route. Setting off from the Pavilion at a brisk pace, I learnt that 200 years ago, pigs had to be tethered on the Old Steine after they developed a taste for fishermen's nets, and started eating away the entire Brighton fishing industry. I also learnt that Prince Albert Street is the youngest road in the Lanes, and having been built a mere 160 years ago is officially "not old". I've love to see Geoff explain that to an American.
Halfway up Prince Albert Street, on the corner of Black Lion Street, is The Cricketers pub, which is where the alcoholic shepherd was impounded, sheep and all, in the nineteenth century. Sadly he couldn't get a drink as it was just the town pound in those days. Drugs of a different kind might have been on offer though, as that area was known as the 'Hemp Shares', after it was divided up into plots to grow hemp for making sails. Nothing changes around those parts. Apart from the making sails bit.
Ducking down an alleyway into Ship Street Gardens, Geoff pointed out a fig tree in somebody's back yard which has been there for so long that it was known as 'The Old Fig Tree' a hundred years ago. It's now the even older fig tree.
Heading up Duke Street towards Churchill Square, we were told that 200 years ago the area was known as Bunker's Hill, and was described in the 1770s as being "a refuge for gypsies and vagabonds". Anyone who's walked down West Street on a Friday night will know that it still is.
The area near the clock tower was once home to one of Brighton's worst slums, known as 'Petite France', presumably because everyone smelled. We didn't stay there long, and having stood outside the clothes shop 'Cult', looking like some kind of religious gathering, we moved on past Boots to Sports World, which is built on the site of the old town cow-house. Geoff milked that story for all it was worth, before leading us towards North Laine and the Brighthelm Centre, the basement of which was apparently one of the great punk rock venues of the 1970s until it burned down (if it's possible to burn down a basement) in what Geoff called "a mysterious fire". It's now a church, so God clearly does move in mysterious ways. He never did like punk.
Walking down North Road, past the fantastically named Gardner House, which until 1932 was a branch of Marks & Spencer's, we arrived in Gloucester Street, which in 1826 was home to a prize-winning Nectarine Orchard. I thought the nearby Vine Street might have a fruity connection, but apparently it’s just named after a bloke called Vine.
We headed back via Jubilee Street, so called because of the huge bun fight (Geoff's words, not mine) held there by our very own Thomas Read Kemp to celebrate George III's Golden Jubilee in 1809, and arrived back at the Royal Pavilion for a short history of the Pavilion Gardens Café, which used to be on the seafront, until the Nazis threatened to fight us on the beaches, and it had to be moved inland. Geoff finished by imparting the most important information of the night: that the café's rock cakes are "to die for". He made a point of saying that last year. I think the man's on commission.
